the flock! Mon Dieu, my darling, how very similar our
tastes are, both of us! He is charming, your Lucan, he is charming. Kiss
me, dear--don't look any farther, don't look any farther; he is positively
just the man for us."

"But, mother, since he does not want me!"

"Good! he does not want you now! What nonsense! what do you know about it?
Did you ask him? Besides, it is impossible, my darling; you were made for
each other in all eternity. He is charming, _distingue_, well-bred, rich,
intelligent, everything, in a word--everything."

"Everything, mother, except in love with me."

The baroness exclaiming anew against such a very unlikely thing, Clotilde
exposed to her eyes a series of facts and particulars which left no room
for illusions. The dismayed mother was compelled to resign herself to the
painful conviction that there really was in the world a man of
sufficiently bad taste not to be in love with her daughter, and that this
man unfortunately was Monsieur de Lucan.

She returned slowly to her residence, meditating on the way upon that
strange mystery the explanation of which, however, she was not long to
wait.

CHAPTER II.

TWO FAST FRIENDS.

George-Rene de Lucan was an intimate friend of the Count Pierre de
Moras, Clotilde's cousin. They had been companions in boyhood, in youth,
in travels, and even in battle; for, chance having led them to the United
States at the outbreak of the war of the rebellion, they had deemed it a
favorable opportunity to receive the baptism of fire. Their friendship had
become still more sternly tempered in the midst of these dangers of
warfare sustained fraternally far from their own country. That friendship
had had, moreover, for a long time, a character of rare confidence,
delicacy, and strength. They entertained the highest esteem for each
other, and their mutual confidence was not misplaced. They, however, bore
no resemblance whatever to each other. Pierre de Moras was of tall
stature, blonde as a Scandinavian, handsome and strong as a lion, but as a
good-natured lion. Lucan was dark, slender, elegant and grave. There was
in his cold and gentle accent, in his very bearing, a certain grace
mingled with authority, that was both imposing and charming.

They were not less dissimilar in a moral point of view; the former a jolly
companion, an absolute and settled skeptic, the careless possessor of a
danseuse; the latter always agitated despite his outer calm, romantic,